


lending a hand

by thisisgermy



Series: huuh whaaaaat [6]
Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware, Self Aware AI
Genre: Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Lazy story, Mental Health Issues, Touch-Starved, an alternative to the end part one, loss of limb, minigun arm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24381898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisgermy/pseuds/thisisgermy
Summary: i'm gonna go off a limb and say that you're not doing that great.
Relationships: Gordon Freeman And Darnold
Series: huuh whaaaaat [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739653
Comments: 10
Kudos: 105





	lending a hand

**Author's Note:**

> started: 21/5/2020  
> ive restarted and added and changed so much of this and now im just sick of looking at it  
> also the fact that half life and hlvrai have been merged by ao3 is really funny to me

he blanked out, staring at his new arm. fake arm. tube metal arm. 

what the fuck. his arm was metal tubes now. it had been his normal hand, then that'd been chopped off to a grotesque stump, and now it had regrown to become a hunk of stylised metal. it hadn't grown back as flesh, but as something else entirely. what the _fuck_. 

it was heavy and uncomfortable, a constant weight on his right side that spiked with pain with the tiniest twitch. no where near as bad as it had been since the Incident, but it was still there, still constant, still a wolf's bite. and now, it had become a full scale anomaly; something strange, unnatural, merged with his body, a part of him he didn't understand and probably _would_ never completely understand. the thing protruded _inside_ of him, merged with flesh and bone, and even though he couldn't feel the tubes, he could _feel_ it as a whole.

what the fuck. what the fuck had his life become.

'-an? dr freeman? are-are you alright?' gordon blinked. a blurry darnold stood before him, watching him nervously. 'i-i understand that your new arm is still rather, ah, new, but don't worry! we can go through some quick physical therapy to get you used to it! just uh, one quick question,' darnold pointed to the metal tubes, his other hand behind his back as he quickly took on a scientist stance. he stared a hole into gordon's shiny limb and asked, 'are you absolutely, positively, 100% _certain_ that that _wasn't_ what your hand looked like before?'

a million thoughts flew through gordon's mind within that one instance.

was his blood going to be infected with whatever metal contraption was attached to him? did he have every single element of black mesa's "water" network flooding his blood stream? would it ever be removed, or was he slowly dying? like, would he just fall flat because of the toxins in his body? what was gonna kill him first - his toxin blood, or the science team and benrey? what was left of the u.s military, for real this time? the aliens? benrey himself?

darnold's potion had saved him from a-day-and-four-hour-no-hand death. darnold had helped him. he'd helped give him his "arm" back, however weird it was. and now, he was, essentially, a man-made, conscious, mobile, literal-walking weapon, because whatever the fuck the tubes were were _not_ human. he was a physicist, but he knew the look of a weapon when he saw one, especially when said weapon was permanently _stuck_ to him. what the fuck. oh, what the _**fuck**_.

he slowly brought the tubes up to his bleary face, not seeing a stump spurting with blood, but instead a clump of metal glued to the other end, in a sadistic attempt of being a hand. with the taste of brown came an incredibly noticeable dampness in pain, forever growing fainter and fainter. not completely gone, but not a constant thump, either. it wasn't his _hand_ , but it _was_ ; no matter how he looked at it, it was an appreciated upgrade, even if it was insane and unsanitary and breaking some kind of physic law, as well as breaking his entire mind.

he was gonna cry. 

'... dr freeman?' gordon barely registered darnold, eyes far away. '... oh. okay. well um, that's alright; you don't, _have_ to respond right away, but ah ... wow, a-are you actually alright-'

' **arm**.' he said it matter of factually, heavy with emotion and exhaustion, holding it out for darnold to see like he was at a show and tell. 

'............................. yes.' darnold responded. that was when he noticed the tears streaming down gordon's cheeks. 'o-oh! oh, don't cry! i know my potion isn't top notch yet, i mean, i-i've only tested it on a mouse before, but-'

' _ **Arm**_.' gordon kept crying, his bottom lip an earthquake, his stare remaining straight ahead and blank.

'do forgive him, darnold!' dr coomer called from way across the room, sitting sideways on the knocked over barrel gordon had sucked from not five minutes ago. 'after everything that's happened, i believe his mental state has utterly shattered!' darnold concluded that, yes, maybe having your arm cut off while going through whatever else was happening on the facility probably wouldn't be kind to anyone's brain.

'do help him through it, if you please! we want to get going!' bubby added. 'just, call him a bitch boy or something!'

'why-why can't one of you help him?' darnold asked with a sheepish rub of his neck. 

'we have! once before! to offer gordon comfort now would cost one Playcoin(tm), since he received it for free in previous times, and i don't think he is lucid enough to accept the transaction!' that made. zero fucking sense. 

gordon, throughout their chatter of nonsense, was still stuck in his wet, 100 yard stare. he didn't flinch even when darnold waved his hand and snapped his fingers in front of his face. darnold's expression pinched, reluctant.

'... well, i do want you guys out of my workshop, like, _now_ , so uh.' with a tremendous sigh, darnold stepped forward and wrapped his arms around gordon's shoulders, awkwardly patting his back, because he had zero ideas on how else to gain gordon's attention otherwise. gordon shuddered at the contact, the tears falling harder, and with the power of a tiger, gordon returned the embrace with vigour, wasting no time at all. darnold grunted when the heavy _smack_ of his new arm landed directly on his spine. gordon's real hand gripped a fist full of darnold's lab coat, his form trembling. darnold could feel the left side of his neck grow wet with each of gordon's sobs, could feel the shivers wrack down gordon's body in violent shivers. that was when he deduced that, yeah, this guy was severely fucked up with mental issues.

'aw, it's okay.' darnold whispered over gordon's sobs. he wasn't sure if they were of relief or pain. 'i'm just glad my potion worked for you and that it didn't utterly melt your insides into iron! even if you did insult them!'

'thank you.' gordon rasped, muffled into the side of darnold's throat. they were basically chest to chest at that point, the HEV suit blocky against him. 'holy shit, _thank_ you darnold, fucking _thank_ you, i- it's- my arm, it's back, fuck, it's not my _real_ arm but- i-'

'don't-don't work yourself up, i'm ah, always happy to help out a fellow scientist, even with a government funded, top secret prototype!' gordon didn't respond to that, instead holding on tighter, so darnold didn't add anything else.

slowly, after what felt like forever, gordon calmed enough to loosen his clutch. darnold kept rubbing circles on gordon's back for lack of anything better to do. silence was shared between them, even as the rest of the science team and benrey ran amok around his improvised lab. he didn't watch them scatter bottles of potions about, or benrey pour gamer fluid onto his laptop full of research, instead keeping his focus on gordon's dying shakes. the weight and feel of someone holding him was extremely nice, even if the pair didn't know each other.

gordon sighed, his tense posture sagging forward. '... okay. ... thanks, i'm. i'm good. yeah, i'm ah, i'm good.' he sniffled and pulled away, and darnold cleared his throat and took a small step back, too. the event felt like déjà vu to gordon, which was something he _really_ disliked. 'thanks, i, uh. i'm not usually that.' gordon's eyes glared at the tubes again, a lift-less cloud in his expression. '... that easy to break.' darnold was extremely glad the rest of the science team chose that moment to interfere, because he had absolutely no clue on how to respond.

'are you done with your breakdown yet, gordon? it's about high time we left this place and got moving!'

'yes gordon, we are rather pressed for time as is! tending to our mental wounds is not a luxury we have to spare at the moment!' darnold rung his hands, not liking gordon's expression, but there was very little else he could do. he didn't know them, they didn't know him, and they seemed in a rush. he'd done all he could for them and gordon. he cleared his throat again and clapped his hands together, straightening up. darnold saw bubby cross his arms from across the room.

'this wouldn't have happened if you'd had your Black Mesa Silly Straw(tm) dumbass-'

'okay! now about that physical therapy!' gordon looked at him, holding the bottom of the tubes with his flesh hand. 'do you think you could try to squeeze your new hand to make a, uh. a fist? like a punch?' 

gordon did just that, despite not having a hand. the tubes spun and fired real, actual bullets, that got embedded into the floor in showers of concrete. heat ran rivers up his arm, biting his shoulder and making his bones scream, the shot of pain causing white stars to flash inside gordon's skull. the rest of the science team wooped and jumped backwards at the shower, and darnold quickly scribbled the results of the therapy onto a notepad he had gotten from seemingly nowhere.

gordon heard someone say 'shooting your fingernails', then someone else say 'exactly how i remember', but his vision blanked out again, their voices becoming static. his mind had officially broken. his new arm, created of metal tubing, was actually a fucking mini-gun that he could, some-fucking-how, clench to fire, and that hurt his mind far more than the stump ever did. 

his last clear sight was darnold's face, mouth shaped in an "O" and eyes comically wide. 'oh! i do believe gordon is about to faint!' was also the last clear thing he heard before he slumped to the floor, unconscious.


End file.
